When my son was in late elementary/early middle school, he and two of his best friends favored a gamed I call “How About,” because that was always the way the game began. “How about I’m king of the river and you’re trying to get across and I try to stop you…” They needed no more than a brief premise to be off and running, often chasing each other in pursuit of territorial control. What was striking about the game was the way their imaginations flew immediately into hyperdrive as soon as the How About premise was laid out. They never needed to clarify rules or roles, the action simply unfolded organically. They often played this game at a creek where I took them after school, but they could play it anywhere: inside a house, in someone’s back yard, amidst the driftwood on the shoreline of Lopez Island. It was just when “devices” had come on the scene, encroaching and devouring young brains, so this game made our parental hearts soar with relief that our children’s imaginations were still intact.

These boys—now young men—have not become writers, but, like all human beings, they will always be storytellers. The difference between them and writers is that writers decide to commit stories to paper, expanding, elaborating, exploring the labyrinth of possible story paths and character choices until the choices feel right.

For many novelists like me, story begins with exactly such a premise. I call it a What If, but it could just as easily be called a How About. I test the waters with the thin thread of a speculation that holds juice for me. What if a sibling of yours were to do something really heinous? (This became the What If for my novel His Mother’s Son.) What if a woman were to realize she had the power to change the weather? (This was the What If for Weather Woman.)

This What If/How About thinking has become second nature to me after years of writing novels, but I think it’s a habit of thinking we all possess, whether or not we corral and exploit it. Who doesn’t daydream, spinning out alternatives to the reality we know? What if?…and then?…and then?…and then? It is in this daydreaming, this speculating, this what if/how about spooling out  of alternatives where you can go to find the heart of your next story.